Beyond the Fringe: The Boldly Bald

THE National Basketball Association playoffs, which started last Thursday and will last through mid-June, are more than a showcase of the players' athleticism, grace, muscle and trash-talking, more than a display of slam dunks, three-point shots, behind-the-back passes and reverse layups, and more than a clinic of savvy coaching maneuvers and last-second stratagems.

They will be a nightly tribute to the shaved head, for it seems that basketball players have embraced the shorn look more than any other athletic group or any other profession.

Whether as a fashion statement, a cover-up for a receding hairline or a means of increasing aerodynamics, the hairless head is the style du sport for the Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan, the ultimate basketball machine. Charles Barkley, the outrageous forward of the Phoenix Suns, is second in command of the shaved-head pack in the playoffs, followed by Cliff Robinson and Terry Porter of the Portland Trail Blazers, Derrick Coleman of the New Jersey Nets, Xavier McDaniel of the Boston Celtics and Sean Elliott and Terry Cummings of the San Antonio Spurs. Shaquille O'Neal, whose team, the Orlando Magic, did not make the playoffs, is the most prominent full-baldie absent from the post-season.

But the shaved head -- the ultimate anti-coif and a brash statement of rebellion against a hair-obsessed society -- is not restricted to basketball players. It is becoming a stylish fact of modern life.

"It looks tough," said Nelson George, a shaved head himself and the author of "Elevating the Game: The History and Esthetics of Black Men in Basketball" (Fireside, 1993). "It's more macho than a regular bald head. Barkley was the first guy to voluntarily shave it all off, and his head has come to represent his relentless, in-your-face game. So much about basketball is establishing a presence on the court. There's a certain level of assertiveness that people feel about the bald head."

In addition to bold, threatening and cutting-edge, the shaved head may, surprisingly, produce an avuncular look.

"I challenged myself," said George Foreman, who through a slip of a pair of scissors 16 years ago, chose to remove a nearly full head of hair for good. "Hair became something for other people. I was no longer satisfied with hair." Without hair, Mr. Foreman metamorphosed from the thuggish grimness of his first heavyweight boxing career to the cheerful, cheeseburger-guzzling preacher man of his current folk-hero incarnation.

"When I used to smile, everything was built around my hair," he said. "When you move the hair off, you see the top of your head, and people think I'm smiling even when I'm not. Even my eyes look like they're smiling."

Hair as a symbol of manliness goes back at least to Samson and his barber. Rock musicians over the last 30 years have revolutionized hair's wild and macho symbolism, from the Beatles' mop tops to Gregg Allman's long blond hair to Twisted Sister's writhing tresses. No corner of rock has been hairier than heavy metal; its musicians' absurdly long manes seem to act as another instrument.

Yet earlier this year, Mr. Lee of Motley Crue had a friend shear his hair off. "I was bored of looking at the same person," he said. "I had a few drinks, had a buzz on and said, 'Let's just do this.' " He admits that he may be lazy about maintenance, allowing stubble to reveal itself too often. But he's enjoying his unhair style. "It looks scary," he said. "There's a psychotic side to it, like I'm going to kill someone. I like it."

If the shaved-head movement gathers mainstream steam, it would be bad news for the hair-replacement industry. The shaved head says you have chosen this look, this style, this way of life; that you recognize the psychic, physical or even material value of full baldness; that you favor it over a full head or fringe of hair. And the worlds of hair care and cosmetics could get a severe jolt if more women shave their heads like Sigourney Weaver in "Alien 3" and the singer Sinead O'Connor (although she lately seems to have regrown a short crop of hair).

Bald men with a fringe of hair are told by the shaved heads that they don't know the tonsorial epiphanies of lopping it all off, for theirs is a pro active superbaldness. They talk about how freely their shaved heads flout society's merciless hair conventions. How women ask to touch their smooth and bare expanses of scalp. How it brings inner peace, especially to men who've falsified their naked pates with bad and noticeable toupees. How it creates a kind of agelessness where no one knows if you're balding or turning gray or white. How it makes others think more boldly, more fearfully about you.

After he shaved off his fringe, Mr. Della Femina recalled this reaction: "The view was, 'I don't want to mess with this guy.' Same guy. Just a few hairs gone. Before that, I was a sedate pussycat. It shows what hair means."

I am a bald man myself with a fringe of hair. I even wrote a book, "Bald Like Me" (Collier, 1990), revised and reissued as "The Joy of Baldness: Men With Less Hair and the Women Who Love Them" (S.P.I. Books). A lawyer called me after the initial publication to say that my anti-hair-replacement message had inspired him not to buy a hairpiece. The book did not sell well but this unexpected ability to move a person who had thought of himself as hair-impaired was a reward in itself.

Several weeks later, the lawyer called again, with a more assertive manner, to say he'd shaved off his fringe. Suddenly he was Telly Savalas. A month after that, he started calling regularly to challenge me to shave off my fringe. I have been tempted. But I can't do it; I don't have the guts.

Surely there were shaved heads before Yul Brynner's. But nobody exploited the look and made it acceptable as a symbol of male sexuality quite like the King of Siam.

But Brynner did not spark a shaved-headed movement in his lifetime. It was still an exotic look by the time he died in 1985, and such intermediate symbols of the value of the shaved head like Mr. Savalas did not motivate others to follow in their hairless wake. Mr. Savalas is hardly a shaved-head proselytizer. Several years ago, when I researched baldness, the actor's press agent informed me that despite nearly 30 years of shaving his head, Mr. Savalas did not view himself as a bald man but as a man who could, if he stopped shaving, summon up all the hairs yelping to escape their follicular jail.

The Great Popularizer of the shaved head has been Michael Jordan. The Chicago Bulls' sublime guard undoubtedly possessed immense athletic skills before shaving his balding scalp, but the player considered by many as the greatest ever to play basketball did not completely demonstrate his talent for hardwood aerodynamics until the Big Shave. Now, many basketball players want to be like Mike. They've put their faith in a simple tenet of tonsorial physics: less hair equals less drag; less drag means greater flight time and greater altitude. And it looks good, too.

Swimmers have long known that a hairless head and body can improve their performance. John Troup, the director of sports medicine for the United States swimming team, said that hairlessness requires less energy and improves hydrodynamics by an average of 7 percent.

The Summer Olympics produced a touching, emotional tale when members of the United States volleyball team shaved their heads in sympathy with their teammate Bob Samuelson, who, because of alopecia areata, lost all his hair when was 18. What a moment for the naked head: young men, whose hair symbolized their macho athleticism, purposely becoming bald to make a statement of solidarity. These dozen glorious domes then went on a delectable hot streak, becoming a singularly ferocious team. It was only when stubble appeared -- alas, there was no second shearing -- that the Americans became vulnerable and lost to the overhaired Brazilians.

Mike Sager, a Rolling Stone writer, lives contentedly with his shaved head every day. It is a life choice that has benefited his career.

"I write about multiculturalism and groups that misunderstand each other," said Mr. Sager, who previously had a fringe of hair. "With the shaved head, you don't know what I am, so you have no preconceived stereotypes. I'm not mean. But the bad guys think I'm a cop, and the cops think I'm a bad guy. I'm always pulled over at airports. It's a great equalizer. It helps me understand racism."

Before 1984, Montel Williams, the talk-show host who was then a Navy lieutenant, looked like an ordinary man with receding hair. He was on a submarine when he shaved it off. Mr. Williams said his Navy buddies told him: " 'Man, that looks right. That's you.' "

Mr. Williams's wife, Gracie, said: "He's much sexier without hair. His face is so young that hair would make him look older."

If the shaved-head phenomenon continues, psychological enslavement by hair may end. Imagine judging a person by the blank slate of his bare pate without all the baggage that hair carries. Are you listening, Yul?

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A version of this article appears in print on May 5, 1993, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: Beyond the Fringe: The Boldly Bald. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe